Honestly, I wish there was a bit more to talk about... my life mostly consists of work and martial arts, though two of what used to be four days of that have gone out the window thanks to one of the places we met at deciding to go in more of an MMA direction. Idea being, if MMA work couldn't be put into it, then there was no point in it being there (doesn't help that my sensei and the kickboxing instructor had a falling out due to advice about teaching being taken the wrong way... some 28 year olds don't know how to listen to a 50 year old that has been teaching these things for over 20 years, it seems). I'll miss the facilities, but if that's what they were wanting to do, then I won't miss them.

Anyways, some of you may know that I'm working at Barnes and Noble now, sometimes in the cafe, sometimes as a cashier, and sometimes out on the floor as a Customer Service rep. I could drone for hours about the kinds of people I've come across there, but two stood out to me as disturbingly interesting.

One guy was last week, when I was working cashier in an afternoon-evening close shift. Some people were getting ready for trips, some were buying things for their kids, some just wanted to read because it either looked interesting or gave them something to do. Then one guy who looked like he was in his mid-30's came up with a stack of magazines and a book. First one is Men's Health... nothing to think about there, but then I noticed everything else was wrapped in plastic, which means one of two things. Either there's a CD inside that they don't want people stealing, or for legal reasons they have to make sure kids aren't going to see anything they shouldn't in case it gets dropped. Sure enough, the rest were porno mags, and he just kept staring at me the whole time, as though he was waiting for me to say something judgemental so he could make a scene. Instead I just asked him if he had his B&N member card, which caught him off guard (he finally found it after 30 seconds of searching and 5 seconds of zoning out). What was the book? 'Twas a book of lesbian erotica stories, complete with two women laying on top of a bed, legs and feet sticking out so as to cover up everything. The kindest thing I can say is that there was little doubt as to what he was planning on doing that night. :lol:

However, what crossed the line from disturbing to creepy was a few weeks ago. I was working Customer Service, where you field phone calls, help people find books, and place orders on books that we don't have. This one fellow comes up to the desk, about 3 inches shorter than me (I'm 5'8"), mid-40's to early 50's, bald on top, round glasses, round body, and pale. At CS I never take the time to form opinions on people unless if they're asking my opnion on something they may like based on books that they already own (which they tell me anyway), but this guy for whatever reason made me feel like I would need to put any and all training to good use. First thing he did was ask for a book about coin collecting that we didn't have. No big deal, he decided to order it as a ship-to-home, so I just needed to get some personal info and ring up his order. The whole time though, he's saying random things that he thinks are witty, then leans back, closes his eyes, and would do this quick high-pitched wheezing laugh that would make his face turn beet red. Weird or quirky turned into something worse with his next question, though...

"Do you have any magazines that will show me girls that are trying to come to America? If possible, I prefer those from Eastern Europe, like Ukraine or Estovia, you don't see ones like them around here! Haaaaaa he he!"

After taking a sec to process that, I asked him for clarification & told him that I didn't think we had anything like that, even after he said "You know, mail-order brides that they have from Russia? I've always wanted to see what kind of girls do that." So to indulge him as a customer, i turn the monitor around so he can see that everything he was telling me to look for (this went on for about 5 minutes) was turning up no results. Not a single one, for which I was quite glad about... he had me scour everything in the newsstand (newspapers and magazines) as well as book database, and nothing ever popped up. Not a thing. So happy that made me, but he'd constantly go back and forth between being frustrated to laughing that laugh. Eventually he finally took his pre-order form to the cash register once he realized that no, he wasn't going to find a girl-to-order catalog in our store, at which point I turned to my manager (who had been shelving some promo books and was waiting to see if I could handle it all) with a look that was somewhere between Chiyo after riding in the Yukarimobile and the way Kimura-sensei always looks (if you've seen or read Azumanga Daioh, you'll know exactly what I'm alluding to here). She commended me on my patience, but also stepped over to CS for a moment to mentally unwind, because it took me a bit to recover from dealing with creepo-in-the-flesh-seeking-foreign-flesh.

What gets witnessed on a computer screen doesn't quite prepare you for the people who flaunt it to people that they think will understand them. Dx

I have to be at work in 20 minutes, so I'll just say that Dragon Age Origins deserves all the praise I've heard, Xenogears is still a special experience despite its flaws, and I'm planning on picking up a new game this week.